The undeniable spirit of New Orleans has infused our four days here with a beat all of its own. From our first evening when we took our eye-opening walk down Bourbon Street, to the photograph we had taken with an Uncle Sam lookalike outside the Maple Leaf jazz bar on Oak Street, and the magical, […]

Arrived in New Orleans the other night after 600 mile drive from an unexpected stop in the unexpectedly delightful St. Genevieve, MO. A gumbo dinner and good night’s sleep later and we’re enjoying coffee in high humidity. Amid the sweet, sticky madness of it all, I thought it might be grounding to make a list […]

As we leave the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival I look across Kansas City to the trees lying beyond the skyscrapers. The Winter’s Tale which we saw in Southmoreland Park feels like it is sending its city beat onto the road in front of us. We are at once driving away from and heading towards […]

We’ve had a terrific and enjoyably intense first full day, thanks in no small part to the orchestrative efforts of Artistic Director Sidonie Garrett, a force of nature and of culture, and someone who is bound to feature again on this site. We conducted fourteen interviews with people associated with the Heart of America Shakespeare […]

As we descended into Newark yesterday afternoon – blithely unaware that the forerunning tempests stirred by Hurricane Arthur had caused our connecting flight to be cancelled, and that we would spend the night not in Kansas City, as planned, but at the Kenilworth Inn, Kenilworth, New Jersey – our irrepressible attendant announced that we should […]

The 4th July is upon on us, and I’ve just landed in Kansas City for the start of Shakespeare on the Road, an epic road trip all around North America which aims to tell the story of the extraordinary phenomenon of the Shakespeare festival. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has teamed up with the University of […]

I am pleased to post the following on behalf of Andrew Dickson, a journalist at the Guardian and a Fellow of our exciting new project (with University of Warwick) Shakespeare on the Road: “A few years back, when I was just about to start work on a new book project, I was chatting about it […]

Professor Reg Foakes, who died at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon just before Christmas, was a wise, liberal-minded, influential and much-loved Shakespeare scholar and teacher. His career spanned over sixty years at the universities of Birmingham, Durham, Yale, Toronto, Kent and Los Angeles. He was born and grew up in West Bromwich. His degree at Birmingham […]

This sonnet could easily be spoken by Antony about Cleopatra and their ‘age in love.’ It doesn’t take long for ‘simple truth’ not only to be suppressed, but changed into a web of lies. The poet pretends to believe his ‘love’ in the hope that she might think him younger than he is.The volta asks […]